David Hockney portrait

The Yorkshire artist David Hockney has graduated from his place among the
radical Brit Pop artists of the 1960s to become one of the 20th century’s
finest painters.

Photo: Getty Images

10:01AM BST 26 Jun 2008

He was born in Bradford in 1937 and now works from his California studio. Many of his works are marked by an obsession with swimming pools, natural landscapes and Sir Cliff Richard.

As a young man, Hockney attended Bradford College of Art and the Royal College of Art in London, where he mixed with many famous contemporary artists.

He often made reference to his homosexuality early in his career, most obviously in the famous piece, We Two Boys Together Clinging, that he named after a Walt Whitman poem.

Hockney later worked with photography, creating a style known as photomontage by arranging Polaroid pictures in a grid formation. In the 1970s, his fascination with cubism influenced a landmark portrait of Celia Birtwell, her face fragmented, for the cover of French Vogue.

Hockney donated his painting of a Yorkshire coppice to the Tate Gallery and considers it his best work. "I thought if I'm going to give something to the Tate I want to give them something really good,” he said.

Although Hockney now lives abroad, most of his works are displayed in an old factory, Salts Mill, in Saltaire, the West Yorkshire town named after Victorian philanthropist Titus Salt.

He recently criticised the Government for its plan to ban images of naked children. He also claims he has only ever voted twice in his life.